The safety of patients placed in corridors after being seen by emergency department doctors has been jeopardised with the engagement of 15 foreign nurses, according to the nurses’ union.

The nurses, most of whom are Spanish, turned up at the imaging and paediatric corridors on Wednesday after the Malta Union of Midwives and Nurses ordered its nurses not to work in corridors, which lack facilities and privacy.

With Mater Dei Hospital chock-a-bloc, 20 patients were this week accommodated in the imaging corridor and 18 others in the paediatric corridor. Patients are placed in these corridors after being seen by doctors at the emergency department.

The union had issued similar directives when the corridors were used in the past.

However, the orders were withdrawn some five months ago following an agreement that they will not be used again.

So when they were opened up again for the admission of patients on Wednesday, the union reissued its directives. In the evening, 15 nurses, including Irish, Italian and Spanish nationals showed up at these corridors.

Instead of listening to MUMN’s concerns that led to the directives, the government was acting as a strike breaker to the detriment of patients, union president Paul Pace noted.

These corridors have no facilities, and patients, some of whom are on stretchers, have no privacy at all. By placing foreign nurses in these corridors, the situation had become worse for the critically-ill patients as they had to deal with a language barrier while the nurses had no experience working in corridors at Mater Dei Hospital, Mr Pace added.

He made it clear the union was not worried that the nurses were foreign, as it did not doubt their professionalism, but it was concerned that they had been engaged in a crisis area zone with no facilities.

Meanwhile, the union issued new directives to nurses not to admit new patients in MAU1 and MAU2, which both have some 24 patients each in the corridors.

This is the latest in a series of protests by nurses who say they are overworked.

In January, the union claimed Mater Dei Hospital was at least 200 nurses short.

Questions sent to the Health Ministry were not answered by the time the newspaper went to print.